A group of motherboard enthusiasts working for GIGABYTE, sharing their insider knowledge and general ramblings of the motherboard business, the tech industry, latest technologies and trends, and other random odds and ends.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

TeamAU had a get together a week ago in Adelaide to put the new GIGABYTE X58A-OC motherboard through its paces and hopefully break some records while having fun. Records tumbled, LN2 vaporised and fun was definitely had by all.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Three months ago Sandy Bridge launched and overclockers went out and bought hardware to compete on world’s biggest overclocking league, www.hwbot.org. We had a glance at the results today under Core i7 2600K CPU and found that GIGABYTE tops every single 2D category which obviously tests system performance.

The most popular board that tops the record charts is the P67A-UD7 and the new UD7-B3. P67A-UD4-B3 also holds the PCMARK05 record. SuicidePhoenix, Mad222, dumo and SteveRo are pushing the boards the hardest. Congratulations men, keep overclocking it!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

I wanted to point out to some nice changes which overclockers will appreciate on the latest B3 chipset board from GIGABYTE. B3 chipset change was obviously the major change however the team also used the opportunity to implement a lot of feedback from the community to improve certain parts of the performance and generally better end user experience. One of such nice changes is related to LLC.

LLC refers to LoadLine Calibration or otherwise a bios option that control the voltage droop when different loads are introduced. For some of you still scratching your head what this means if you have an overclocked system, for example, and have set 1.6vcore voltage in bios you would expect LLC enabled option to control that vcore to be very close to what you have set in bios whether you are browsing internet or doing video encoding on your PC. What Marko (Bullet92) found is that 1.6v in bios with the P67A-UD4-B3 is 1.611v in idle and 1.609v under load (measured with a digital multimeter) which is incredibly tight voltage regulation from Max Power VRM GIGABYTE uses on their P67 Sandy Bridge boards.

UD4 range is usually a very popular bang for buck OC board so when we finally see coldbug-less CPUs in Sandy Bridge this may become a very important subzero OC aid as well.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

B3 series of motherboards from GIGABYTE have been fine tuned some more and certain models have had a spec increase as well but how do they overclock. Mad222 took his old chip and improved his results with his golden 2600K running at 5.86GHz. Memory is running near 1.1GHz 7-7-6-20-1T timings as well.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Taipei, Taiwan, March 24, 2011 - GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co., Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards and computing hardware solutions today officially announced the availability of the 3TB+ Unlock Utility that allows GIGABYTE motherboards without Hybrid EFI Technology to recognize and use unallocated space on new 3TB and larger hard disc drives (HDDs). The utility is freely available from the utilities page of the official GIGABYTE website: http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/Utility.aspx.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Following up on their ‘first look’ video a few weeks ago, the guys over on Futurelooks.com have now had plenty of time to get more intimate with our G1. Assassin gaming motherboard, giving it a 9/10 rating and high praise for its gaming prowess and attractive weaponized theming.

The GIGABYTE G1.Assassin is an impressive culmination of planning and creativity designed to accommodate the most serious of hardcore gamers. And unlike other brands, there is no confusion about whether this is for a gamer or an overclocker, even though we’ve proven it can.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

For all you smart shoppers in North America, Newegg is currently running a promotional bundle deal with Intel® Core™ i7 CPUs and GIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboards. Pick any G1-Killer motherboard including the G1.Assassin, G1.Sniper and G1.Guerrilla and pair it with an Intel Core i7-950, Core i7-960, or Core i7-970 and save up to $65 dollars. The promotion is running from March 16 – March 31.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Overclockingstation recently put the G1.Assassin motherboard through it’s paces and it’s nice to see that they get the idea that this board was designed for gamers.

The G1.Killer Assassin isn’t a overclocking motherboard and didn’t try to be. It was developed for gamers and offers special components for them. We have to ask for the costs. Actually the price is 426 Euro (price comparison). If you have a look on each single component like sound and network card the price is fair. Overclockingstation was impressed by this motherboard and awarded it with Gold-Award.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Dinos22 chimed in on TeamAU blog to give a heads up to an overclocking event TeamAU is putting together on the weekend. Deanzo, youngpro, bob(nz), Uncle Fester, T_M and dinos22 are flying in around the country and Asia to meet up in Adelaide for this special occasion.

Adelaide V8 Supercars race is on at the same time, who knows there might be a report from the track with the grid girls too hehehe

One other special guest making an appearance will be the new X58A-OC motherboard from GIGABYTE heheh.

Dinos22 and youngpro have done some preliminary testing with the board and got some mighty scores in 2D and 3D in practice runs. Plenty more to see during the event itself but here are a couple of notable scores to wet your appetite…

With the G1.Sniper gaming motherboards starting to hit the store shelves, Linus gives a first hand account of what buyers can expect when taking out their Killer for the first time. We really need to put a warning on the cover, “Use extreme caution when removing inner box, as box flatulence may occur.” lol

Monday, March 14, 2011

We recently reported on an overclocker from Germany approaching the magic 6Ghz mark on Intel’s new Sandy Bridge i7 2600K and P67A-UD7. Jan wasn’t wasting any time and is on a mission to enter into world’s top10 overclockers on HWBOT.ORG. He is currently sitting in 11th spot and put some crazy overclocks. I really love this 3DMARK01 result, just wow!

Friday, March 11, 2011

GIGABYTE Australia announces E-Sports Championships 2011 for CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS with finals to be played at RESPAWN in Melbourne. The prize pool will feature over $4500 in cash and prizes which will create a high level of competition. LAN Qualifiers will be held in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and New Zealand. Registration opens Sunday the 13th of March!

Before I get started with this editorial and presenting you my personal reasons for buying this mainboard, let me get one thing very clear: I am not getting paid to write this article. In fact, this editorial is nothing more than my personal view on the launch of this mainboard and how it could affect the manufacturer of this product or any other manufacturer of hypothetical future products. At the end of this article, I will also try to give a couple of arguments that should make clear the sole purpose of this text is to explain how I believe this board can change the overclocker’s future.As always, feel free to comment on any of the paragraphs of this editorial if you think I’m wrong, right, incomplete or just mental. Okay, let’s get started.

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Just for fun, open your instant messenger and ask any of your overclocking friends (or enemies) how they got into overclocking. Chances are high most of them will reply that they used to play games and wanted more gaming performance for the same amount of money. More bang for the buck, as trained hardware reviewers would say

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The question was simple: how do we integrate features that overclockers want into our current product line-up? As the overclocking community is, historically speaking, a subgroup of the gaming industry, it seems like a very logical step to add the overclocking features to the product line-up designed for and targeted at the gaming community.

I wonder, though … are we, overclockers, really similar to hardcore (video-) gamers?

The answer to this question is, in my humble opinion, definitely no.

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Much like the hardware enthusiasts, the people who are buying server hardware know exactly what they want; the gaming and normal consumers don’t.

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That is exactly the reason why I’m going to buy this board, in retail, with my own money.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Guys at Tweaktown ran a fundraiser to help the recent Queensland flood relief and raised over $6,000. One of those luck donors was drawn out randomly as the winner of a Dream System assembled from parts donated by various manufacturers. GIGABYTE Australia donated the flagship P67A-UD7 motherboard towards this good cause. The lucky winner is Andrew van Slageren. Congratulations Andrew and thanks to everyone that donated!

We had the pleasure of meeting Zaccubus from Team Dignitas at CES where he explained the importance of having solid networking while playing online games. Well, he now has a GIGABYTE G1.Assassin motherboard with the best possible onboard networking solution, the Killer e2100, and provides his impressions of the board and the other contents of it’s package in this short unboxing video.

Note: For a complete list of 12 available XL-ATX cases, please visit the GA-G1.Assassin web page and select the Chassis Support List button.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

A user on XtremeSystems forum called Callsign_Vega recently showed off his new PC. His goal as he says is to run a tripple 30” LCD setup with X58A-UD9 and 3WAY GTX580 SLI at least 60fps at monster resolution. The bloke is running a 990X at 5.5Ghz with a single stage phase cooler, crazy watercooling setup and just way too much geekness to name. I’ll be frank with you, I’m getting rather envious here! You can read and see more HERE. I will leave you with a couple of pics!

“I believe the GIGABYTE G1.Assassin motherboard is a fantastic choice for hardcore gamers looking to get the most out of their system by using 3 or 4 video cards. The Killer E2100 NIC should shine over other network cards and onboard network platforms especially at large LAN parties, and the Creative audio implementation with high-quality components will give the gamer an advantage over the competition by hearing everything clearly and precisely.

This motherboard might not be for some. With a price tag of $530, it is definitely not for everyone. For those not planning on running 4 PCI-Express cards in their system, I would suggest the G1.Sniper motherboard (about $450), which comes with extremely similar specifications as the G1.Assassin however, it is an ATX form factor motherboard with up to 3-way CrossFireX and 3-Way SLI support.”

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Since the G1-Killer MB announcement at CES 2011, GIGABYTE marketing people around the world have been putting on regional launches as the boards start to become available in their markets. I’m noticing on online forums, facebook and the events that I attend, that there is some confusion as to why we chose the X58 platform instead of the newer P67. The answer is simply that it is a matter of product positioning!

PC gaming components tend to be the top of the range because of the stresses placed on them by high definition games, so gamers and power users usually prefer higher end hardware. If we look at available high-end desktop PC platforms, the Intel X58 chipset + Core i7 Extreme processor combination maintains its position at the top of the food chain when it comes to compatible CPU performance (a brute of a CPU with 6 cores and 12 threads) and features such as 32 PCIe lanes for graphics, despite the launch of the Sandy Bridge platform. This is even more convincing after the launch of Intel’s new flagship desktop CPU, the Core i7 990x, just 2 weeks ago. Clearly there is still demand for LGA1366 motherboards when better processors, that are able to demolish performance records as the 990x is currently doing, are still being released .

By comparison, Intel’s 6 Series chipset + Sandy Bridge processor delivers excellent performance in general with special focus on media transcoding, but it is not the power house that the LGA1366 is from both CPU performance and No. of PCIe lanes for multi graphics perspectives (the P67 chipset offers only 16 PCIe lanes for VGA cards that can be split into 2x8 lanes for CrossfireX/SLI). One of the defining features of the G1-Killer MBs is 3-way CrossfireX and SLI (the G1.Assassin even supports 4-way CrossfireX), so the X58 chipset is the logical choice. This would only be possible on a P67 platform if we added a bridge chip like the NF200, like we did with the P67A-UD7, and of course, this would increase the cost of the motherboard for the end user.

Over time it is possible that the G1-Killer series of gaming MBs could extend to other platforms, but for now I hope that this explanation sheds some light on the rationale behind our choice of the X58 chipset for the initial launch.

The only way i can describe what I’ve seen last night on HWBOT is an all out blitzkrieg on Sandy Bridge overclocking by a German OCer SuicidePhoenix, just wow. He posted a CPUz validation at 5961MHz using a GIGABYTE P67A-UD7 and 2600K CPU.

I found it particularly impressive that he did not hold back when it came to RAM either, running 1096MHz 7-7-7-21. It’s obviously telling how comfortable he is with such huge RAM clocks he is getting from GIGABYTE’s flagship board.

Oh but fun does not stop there! Have a look at his benchmark frequencies! 5941MHz CPU, 1112MHz RAM at 7-7-6-20-1T taking the new 2600K record and placing 3rd globally against Gulftown CPUs running close to 7GHz. New platform from Intel is astonishingly efficient!

Jan set the bar really high in 1M SuperPi as well now with the new category world record at 6.219s running 5.94GHz with ram at 1093MHz 7-7-6-20-1T. I am telling you this is nothing short of blitzkrieg hehe.

It’s very nice to see such a monster CPU landing in the hands of a competent overclocker. He has the speed and knows how to use it. I cant wait to see what else he’s about to attack (Poland maybe? heheh juuuuust kidding).